Hogeschool Utrecht helps asylum center in Utrecht
At an asylum center (AC) in Utrecht, children and students from the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences meet weekly. The students help the children in the field of health and well-being, in a playful way. As it turns out, skateboarding and teeth brushing lessons go well together.
It is a surprising sight. On the square in the middle of the asylum seekers’ center in Utrecht’s Oog in Al neighborhood, we see a group of young children enthusiastically strapping on their rollerblades and riding over obstacles with the help of guides. Next to them are a couple of Oral Health Science students from the Hogeschool Utrecht with happy giraffe cuddles, where the same children stop a moment later to brush the giraffe’s teeth with a life-size toothbrush.
This playful method is characteristic of the Healthy and Well project of the Hogeschool Utrecht. The project encourages addressing social issues in the field of health and well-being in Utrecht from different disciplines. For example, Utrecht students from different faculties work together, but they also get to work in practice with residents of the asylum center; something that in turn fits in perfectly with the ambitions of the municipality of Utrecht.
Combining all disciplines
Project leader of the activities at the AC is senior researcher from Utrecht University of Applied Sciences Froukje Smits. She sees the added value of working together at the AC. ,,The social issues at play here are so complex, you can’t solve them from one discipline. We have to work together. In that context, I find Utrecht University of Applied Sciences very interesting. Here we have so much knowledge under one roof: from social work and pedagogy, to physiotherapy, oral care, nursing and orthopedics. I thought: how nice would it be if we could combine all these disciplines?”
And so it happened at the AC in Utrecht. Twice a week, students from various programs visit the site. On the square, students of Speech Therapy, for example, see that students of Social Work take a much broader view when talking to the children. Conversely, Social Work students learn to have an eye for oral health. And that is necessary. The students saw how young children sometimes already had ten cavities in their teeth.
Sport and games
All of this takes place in a context of outdoor sports and games. The students play soccer and card games with the children, or get to work with rollerblades and skateboards. Researcher Froukje herself is also into urban sports; a video from this Hogeschool Utrecht story shows her rolling on her skateboard towards the AZC.
The sports and games element is an important asset, as Marjo Salentijn, lecturer at the Oral Care Sciences course, also saw. “At first you think: hey, skateboarding and brushing teeth, what a crazy combination? But it actually turned out to be a very good combination. Because the students get to play sports with the kids and thereby bond with them, they can provide education much more easily from there.”
Plan Einstein
Moreover, this project establishes a nice connection between the residents of Utrecht and the people living at the AZC – something the municipality of Utrecht explicitly tries to encourage in their “Plan Einstein. As one student explains, “I had a negative image of people in an AZC, because of what I read in the media. But they are actually very ordinary people and the children find it super fun that we do activities with them.”
For initiator Froukje Smits, it is valuable to see how this approach seems to have a long-term effect. “Because we are there twice a week, we can keep repeating the healthy routines and really work on changing behavior. That way everything comes together nicely.”
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